Unless you've just emerged from deep underground, you are probably aware that that massive PS5 firmware update dropped yesterday, bringing with it Discord integration, VRR at 1440p and various other features and improvements. In addition, it also changed the way game discs work on a shared console.
But some fans aren't, well, huge fans of one feature in particular, namely the "game progress" display, pictured above. They feel that knowing how far you are in a game, percentage-wise, is in itself kind of a spoiler and that an option to hide it should be included.
On one hand, we can kind of see it. Let's say you are really starting to feel a new game, you've been hitting it hard, and everything is starting to click. All of a sudden, unbidden, you are told that you're right at the end. If you are anything like us, that would take away some incentive to linger in a gaming world we are likely about to leave for good.
But on the other, a game's Trophy completion percentage sort of already does this, albeit less specifically. Some games track completion percentages internally and will even reward you for reaching those nice, round milestones.
The implications are earth-shattering, and the rabbit hole goes deeper the further you plumb its depths; Is it a spoiler to know a movie's runtime, or that most narrative fiction, in some shape or another, will usually conform to a three-act structure? And why was the creation of the three-act structure falsely misattributed to Aristotle for so long anyway, why does he get so much credit for everything?
Discuss the philosophical implications in the modern-day agora that is the comments section below.
[source reddit.com]
Comments 59
i think its a cool feature
but an option to hide for those that dont would make everyone happy
That's why books have like 100 blank pages at the end so that you don't know how far you are. But who reads books nowadays.
(yes, I'm joking)
@Milt
Shhh don't tell these people that whenever they pause a movie they are watching at home it will show them how much time is left, they will die of a brain aneurysm.
I get this to an extent now you've brought it up. To give an example, when i played Okami back on PS2 and fought Orochi the first time, i assumed it was the final battle. But soon i realised i wasn't even half way through the game, which was a great surprise.
Similarly when i played Zelda a Link to the Past, i had no idea about the dark world, which effectively doubled the length of the game. It was brilliant to find i had loads if game left to go. The impact would have been lessened by a progress bar telling me i had only completed 40 % of the story.
I kinda like that feature. I need to know how far I have left. I'm constantly looking at full game walkthroughs on YouTube to see how many hours I have left, roughly
@Milt sure it is, if I'm playing a game I love I'd hate to see 99% and I'm nearly done. Many times I've thought a game is wrapping up to a conclusion and then it surprises me by carrying on the story or moving to a new world etc. Losing that surprise sucks.
I don't mind it and to be fair I've found that it isn't entirely accurate anyway. Games I've finished are showing incomplete percentages while games I know I'm near the end of are surprising low.
@Rob_230 After playing for 500 hours.. "Game Progress 2%"
You guys can guess the game
@Milt While I agree with you, my wife for example hates knowing when the game is about to end because she likes to be surprised by it. It doesn't affect me, but since it affects other people it should be optional.
For me, knowing I’m at the end of a game is actually a reason to linger longer. Some games I just don’t want to end. FFVII the typical example for me. I didn’t actually complete it until my third playthrough, some years after getting near the end for the first time.
Not so much an issue these days for me. NG+, and a Platinum campaign that can take multiple playthroughs, have kind of reduced the importance of the narrative for me when measuring how much fun I have left in a game.
@jrt87 true, I think in Kena that my profile showed like 1 hour after certainly 10 hours of playing
Imagine playing Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy VI or Elden Ring and THINK you are nearing the end but then see 48%. It can definitely be a spoiler especially when games subvert expectations.
Oh cmon... there are no more problems left to bi... errr "cry" about?
How is this even considered a spoiler?
You can arrive an 30-40% trophy progression, and be near the end of the game anyway... because in said game, there may be many trophies that require exploration, collecting a ton of items, doing some very specific tasks, playing the multiplayer portion, going through new game +, etc etc...
There's nothing wrong to having the option to hide it, but there's no need to blow this meager subject out of proportion.
Aristotle covered so many topics, it’s kinda of unsurprising. He’s seen as the progenitor of the sciences as they’re known today if I recall, guy dipped his toe in everything from rhetoric, logic to zoology.
@jrt87 while I agree that the timer is sometimes completely borked in the case of 97 or 120 hours BOTH could possibly be correct, it just depends what it is tracking. E.g. one may include time in menus, maps, etc., or when you fall asleep and your controller goes to sleep. Whereas the other may not.
It’s like football the match is 45 minutes each half plus extra time, maybe 48 minutes on average but the ACTUAL time spent playing with the ball on the pitch is usually nearer 32 mins per half. Both are correct just counting slightly different things.
Because there is no standard for this they can have different results
@sanderev my guess minecraft?
@Andy22385 ok i can see it now. Sorry I was stupid on that comment, I didn’t notice the game progression bar until now. 😅
This doesnt bother me too much. Id gladly like to know how far through a game like Yakuza is. I swear ive been playing Justice for a gazillion hours.
@kejsi-sensei Actually it's a game I never ever bother playing the main story first: Skyrim. And get lost for literally hundreds of hours doing side quests and exploring.
Just the oposite. If you are just getting it clicking and you see 90% then you will stop your self from going forward and maybe take some time exploring slower, enjoying. Bettet that then just be hit with The End sign out of nowhere.
@Mysterio ahahahah that was so coool and they should stop telling people new movies how long they are or how many episodes a series has
@sanderev haha cant believe i didn't think skyrim. My immediate thought was Assassins Creed
@sanderev Any online game where you skip the campaign.
I kind of like the idea as when you get close to the end you can start planning on what to play next as the end looms on your current game.
It usually becomes fairly common knowledge how long a game will take to complete before, or soon after a game releases so if the playtime is being tracked on the console or save file then you would have a rough idea how far through you are anyway. Although everyone does go through at their own pace. Plus going by my GoW:R and HFW progress both being 100% it seems to only be tracking main story progression so even though you may think you're near the end there may still be a lot of things you still need to do
@jrt87 that's because playstation is trying to be nice, and cover up for all the times you failed and died to Margit, before you beat him.
This is so stupid smh
I think it's both good and bad. If it's a really good game that you're happy to get sucked into, it's nice not knowing how far you are or how much more is still to go. It can be a bit of a distraction from enjoying the game by knowing that info.
If it's a game you're not enjoying enough but want to finish it then it's a good feature to help us know how much more is there still to go and if it's even worth finishing it.
The option to hide would be a good idea. I like it so I hope they don't remove it
It's bit of a nonsense imo. People will cry a river about anything these days. Would be good to have the option to turn it off for those that start frothing at the mouth over it.
It's important to point that it only covers the main story of any game. Some games have so much side quests and postgame content that it isn't really over when we beat the final boss. But yes, I agree that a hide option should be there.
Seriously, I have no Friend.
I think it's a spoiler, especially in a rpg games, I want the option to hide it like trophy with spoiler title.
I want the option to turn it off, it’s not a feature I wanted.
Playing wo long and saw I’m a 3rd done, the first feeling I got was disappointment because now I’m thinking about the game length and wishing it was longer before the game even booted back up.
That should 100% be an optional feature, OR just make the game progress be something you actually have to select in order to see that would work too.
I mostly play rpg games so it’s not a welcome feature at all, urgh!
I like it. I’m a big fan of stats. I’d like to see more things tracked, similar to how Xbox does it.
I prefer this, I frequently take a brief look at Youtube walkthrough collections when playing a game to see how much longer I may have.
Avoids spoilers but gives a good indication. It’s especially helpful when i’m not necessarily loving a game, but want to decide whether to see it through to the end
I think it's neat but it doesn't work properly. I have a 14h save file on Hogwarts Legacy and it shows that I played for 5h only on home screen. So I really doubt the game progress percentage is even right
Have people never looked at stat screen or save file in the last 40 years?
I just want to know if the system is accurate. If I sit in a game, paused, will it count as "playing" it? I hate when games that count their own play time do that. THe more accurate it is, the more I see it as an arguable spoiler (in the barest sense of the word). Even as someone who hates spoilers, I STILL check HowLongToBeat before every game just to sorta gut check myself regarding what I have ahead of me for a given title I'm eyeing. So even someone like myself has never considered play time a spoiler. That's like movie run time or thickness of a book. Do these people get mad at tangible books because they can see how far their bookmark sits amongthe pages?
Also, the trophy progress bar argument doesn't hold water. For most titles nowadays, they have a huge bunch of trophies that are related to random tasks or hidden objectives, many of which require the player to go outside their comfort zone. So, sure, on one hand getting closer to platinum is itself a progress indicator, but it's still waaay different when the "story" can complete at any random interval before 100%. That obfuscates the player's progress through the story pretty well, if you ask me. Enough that I wouldn't consider trophy progress an accurate indicator in the vast majority of modern games. It's just not quite the same.
I'd prefer an option to hide it. Even though it's usually easy enough to gauge roughly how far through a game I am, it's nice to have a bit of mystery to it. Plus, there's occasionally games that last for way longer than expected, and I like to have that surprise.
Bla bla bla yara yara yara
@themightyant It's not that simple. There have been extended periods where the tracker has literally been completely broken, where that and then obviously the Games page were well behind. An example of that is when I had started the PS5 version of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana a month or so ago and for the first week or more it didn't track it at all. The tracking on the system says 25 hours while I have played a bit over 50 hours according to the game. That's not simply it naturally missing time for one reason or another. It literally didn't track me playing the game for the first week or more as I kept checking it on a daily basis but it would never register any playtime until I was already well over 20 hours into the game.
Maybe this new firmware update has finally fixed it since it's now being presented prominently, and them testing the new firmware may have caused it to go offline for a long portion of time, but regardless it is something that has been a legitimate issue for a while now. It is not just something that is missing time here and there like some counters do for one reason or another. It was something that needed to be fixed, with Ys VIII forever missing well over 20 hours of playtime for me being a prime example of why.
And I thought the exaggerated spoiler warning craze died off in the late 2010s. Guess some people will always find a reason to soil their undies.
The past 10 games I’ve played.. after I get a good bit into them I look up the mission list to see how many story missions are left.. I’m careful to not read the future mission names as I count the rest of them.. this way I know to prioritize side missions, collectibles, etc so I can be as powerful as possible before the last mission..
So I like this feature.. but for people who don’t, they should be able to toggle it off
Sown games have fake endings, so yes.
@KilloWertz I'm aware it is not always working, I said as much in my very first paragraph, and that need to be fixed.
But my point was in his specific case 97 and 120 hours COULD (doesn't mean IS) be accurate based on what specific metrics they are tracking. Without a standard to measure what is included and what isn't, how do we track this?
Currently every in game timer does it differently. Some pause when you pause the game or are in menus, others don't. Some keep tracking when the controller is disconnected (e.g. you fall to sleep for a few hours) others don't.
It is entirely possible that a 97 hour playtime by one set of metrics is 120 by another. E.g. As someone who regularly falls asleep playing late I often have dozens of hours added to my playtimes.
Morevover this is the same problem on all platforms. My Xbox states i've played Mass Effect 2 remastered for over 100 hours. Much as I love that game - I played it several times at launch on X360 - on XSX I just did a mostly mainline story run in about 20 hours, nowhere near 100. Other games the counter seems to keep going with quick resume and I massive disparities.
On Switch my times don't match up on the homepage compared to in game either. Again they are measured by different metrics.
You see the problem here right? Broken-ness aside (which as I said needs to be fixed) until there is a standard for what is included and what isn't these are rarely going to align.
I like knowing things so I appreciate knowing, even though I think it’s a bit off as % is a weird way to measure a game. I play a lot of JRPG so I suppose not knowing could be fun but I always want to know. Really wish I had it for God of War b/c I was thinking I was like 60% done when the game was at 99%. 😝
@jrt87 yeah I've noticed that on various games ,seems to be hit and miss
Imagine how this feature will work with Nier Automata, lol
I tried, but I can't understand the point of view of people who see that as a spoiler. I know how many pages are in a book before I start, and my Kindle shows percentage complete while I read - if anything, it can heighten the experience when you realize that all this has happened and you're not even halfway done, yet.
But I'm a big fan of giving people configuration choices. Let the people who are bothered turn it off. I won't, and I may even scoff a little at those who do, but give them an option.
Now, I'd rather Sony spend limited development time making their "Game LIsts" (aka folders) actually USABLE, instead of the worthless pile of **** they are now, but that's just me.
it's not accurate on my games so I don't take much notice
@Darylb88 I’m wondering too. Elden Ring says 16% 😅 wouldn’t be surprised but Borderlands 3 claims 23% which don’t seem right ..
Do they aggregate play times to completion to come up with this percentage, because me falling asleep during games is going to skew that number….
@themightyant Not looking to argue or anything, but you never said that it needed to be fixed. I would have just agreed with you that it needs to be fixed rather than make a point about it, but you never mentioned it. Only that you thought it was messed up.
It's true that they won't necessarily align, at least not very consistently, but I don't know that a 23 hours difference can be chalked up to a different in tracking. If anything, like the person above me said, the tracking you see on the Games page should be more, not 23 hours less. I'm no expert on how things get tracked, but you would assume there would be a much larger chance it would track once the game is open, but the game itself would only track while you're actually playing the game on your save file. Then there's the fact that re-loading a save file would likely revert the game back to the time the game said it was then. In other words, it's much more likely the game would say a lower total than PSN, but the tracking is messed up often enough that it can really mess with that total like the person said or my Ys VIII example.
I've kept a close eye on the whole tracking thing and the Games page for quite a while now as I generally end up there at least once a day for various reasons, and it has been messed up off and on for a long time. Not just a difference in tracking, but literally broken for multiple days at a time. Like I said, my tracking on the Games page for Ys VIII says 25 hours even though the in game tracker says over 50. It's because PSN or whatever was not tracking anything for at least a week as it wasn't tracking any playtime for me for the first 20+ hours I played the game. This has happened before, just not as long. It will says I played a game a day ago even though I was literally playing it right then. While it was broken recently, people had started a new game but it wasn't showing up in their profiles at all. You're not wrong that other platforms have issues with tracking as well, but the tracking on the PS5 should have been fixed a long time ago. The whole Games page has been problematic for as long as I can remember.
Most games I play I google to see how many chapters there are, or some even have it already included on the PAUSE menu. This shouldn't be an issue. We have bigger things to worry about in the first world- game competition percentage spoilers shouldn't be one of them
I thought "game progress" is actually based on your trophy count for that particular game. Maybe there's a misconception with this feature or I did not previous understand the feature.
This wouldn't negatively impact me. If anything I'd feel more motivated to keep on playing.
@KilloWertz You're right I didn't explicitly say it needed to be fixed. But saying it is broken I assumed that went without saying, not a big deal though.
@jrt87 Perhaps. But I think in my case, falling asleep and the controller disconnecting, seems to stop the clock on PS5 but not on SOME in-game clocks. I haven't tested this scientifically, don't hold me too it, but it seems to be the case from the little i've tested. A few hours here and there add up over a 100+ hour game.
I also don't know for example if all in-game clocks stop when we return to the dashboard, or use other features but the game is still running in the background, likely depends game to game, but again PS5 seems to stop there.
I'm not trying to say the system isn't sometimes broken, IT IS and should be fixed, just trying to point out that there are valid reasons why numbers won't match without standardisation.
Last thought. When there was just one number, the in game clock, we took it as gospel it was accurate most of the time, it's only now we have 2 mismatched numbers people are questioning what is right, my point is it's entirely possible the in game clock is wrong too.
What is spoilers is i finally get around to watching wakanda forever, and was still media blackout to only have the thumb nail spoil it completely. I hate thumb nails
Still kinda feel like the OS on PS5 is messy and starting to look cluttered after this update. I could take or leave the game % meter. I see what some of y’all are saying and those are really good points i didn’t even think of at first when i see it. There’s just so much more i feel like Sony needs to do to the Os, not sure this did much for me at least.
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